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Back Up From the Grave Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. Dedication
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Epilogue
  43. An excerpt from Halfway to the Grave
  44. An excerpt from One Foot in the Grave
  45. An excerpt from At Grave’s End
  46. An excerpt from Destined for an Early Grave
  47. An excerpt from This Side of the Grave
  48. An excerpt from One Grave at a Time
  49. About the Author
  50. By Jeaniene Frost
  51. Copyright
  52. About the Publisher

I told myself that I wouldn’t interfere, but this was too much.

“Oh, stuff it, Tate. The upside of being Bones’s creation is his risking his life to break you out of prison, so deal with the less-fun fealty part. Like he said, it’s what you signed on for when you became a vampire.”

Then I turned to Ian. “A sleazy comment about a child? Really?”

“I thought he was being sleazy,” Ian responded at once. “And called him twisted for it, as is anyone who’s interested that way in a child.”

He actually managed to sound affronted. Good to know Ian had some sort of a moral center, even if it was covered by piles of pornography and violence.

“Then this was a misunderstanding that went too far,” I summarized while wondering how many wars had been started by the same thing. “Are we good now?”

That last part was directed at Bones. I didn’t know everything about vampire hierarchy, so I wasn’t sure if Tate still had to pay for assaulting his friend even if Ian was willing to overlook it.

“For now,” Bones said, staring at Tate.

The younger vampire looked away. From the way Tate crossed his arms over his chest, this wouldn’t be the last power struggle between them, but his silence confirmed his acquiescence.

Then Bones turned his attention to Ian. “You never said if you saw the little girl.”

“No, I didn’t,” Ian replied as he put the vehicle back into drive. “Why would your troublemaking corpse bother to imprison a child?”

Bones sighed. “That, mate, you’re not going to believe.”

Twenty-two

Twenty-two

In case we were being followed, we ditched the Suburban once we were away from the prying eyes of populated areas. Then, since half of our group couldn’t fly, the rest of us grabbed a person and played Iron Man’s version of Barrel of Monkeys. Once in the air, the only tails we needed to worry about were planes, helicopters, or drones, but thankfully, we hadn’t seen any of those yet.

We didn’t fly for very long. The skies were too clear to risk traveling over cities, and Madigan could wake up at any moment. Plus, now that the immediate danger had passed, my burst of survival energy was gone, leaving me dangerously tired. Flying while carrying a good-sized male didn’t help. When I found myself eyeing a patch of farmland and fantasizing about crashing onto it so I could sleep, I knew I’d depleted whatever reserves I’d been running on. Thankfully, Ian and Spade began to descend, signaling that we were close to our destination.